Sand mines boom along with fracturing

By VICKI VAUGHAN, STAFF WRITER

Updated 7:49 pm, Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT

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JOHN DAVENPORT photos : SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS BY THE TON: A truck heads out after being loaded with sand and sandstone at the Frac Tech Services mining operation near Brady. Sand from the mine is a high-quality silica that is in demand for hydraulic fracturing operations.

GRAINS OF PROSPERITY: This sand, washed and dried at the Frac Tech Services mining operation near Brady, is more grainy than your normal Texas beach sand.

GRAINS OF PROSPERITY: This sand, washed and dried at the Frac Tech Services mining operation near Brady, is more grainy than your normal Texas beach sand.

Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT

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JOHN DAVENPORT : SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
XXXXX: Sand falls from a conveyor belt onto a pile Wednesday August 31, 2011 at the Frac Tech Services sand mining operation near Brady, Texas. Sand from the mine is used for hydraulic fracturing. less

JOHN DAVENPORT : SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
XXXXX: Sand falls from a conveyor belt onto a pile Wednesday August 31, 2011 at the Frac Tech Services sand mining operation near Brady, Texas. Sand from the mine is ... more

Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT

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JOHN DAVENPORT : SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
LOTS OF JOBS: The Frac Tech Services sand mining operation near Brady is just one of the companies enjoying a boom in Central Texas. The industry may employ as many as 1,000 people, McCulloch County Judge Danny Neal says. less

JOHN DAVENPORT : SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
LOTS OF JOBS: The Frac Tech Services sand mining operation near Brady is just one of the companies enjoying a boom in Central Texas. The industry may employ as many as ... more

Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT

Sand mines boom along with fracturing

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VOCA - Ron Jordan picked up a handful of damp sand as it cascaded off a broad conveyor belt, eventually bound for trucks or rail cars that will take it to eager buyers in South Texas and around the country.

"This is the good stuff," Jordan said as he fingered the golden-colored sand. "This is what everybody wants." The sand felt more grainy than the sand on your average Texas beach.

It was beach sand, though, that two days earlier had been mined from sandstone formed from an ancient sea that lapped at what was shoreline here more than 500 million years ago.

Sand mining is booming in Central Texas, as drilling companies are demanding tons of it. Sand aids in getting the best production from wells drilled in the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas and other tight rock formations.

The sand near tiny Voca in south McCulloch County is prized because of its strength and purity. It's plentiful and relatively easy to mine.

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HOW IT WORKS

Processed sand: Has been mined, washed and sorted by size for use in hydraulic fracturing.

In fracturing: Sand helps keep small fissures in shale rock open so that oil and natuarl gas can flow more readily.

Some sand: After being processed, it is coated with resin to increase its strength and durability. Operators may want resin-coated sand for fracturing wells at greater depths.

Source: Proppant Specialists

Jordan was showing off the sand at a mine and processing plant owned by Proppant Specialists, an affiliate company of Frac Tech Services of Fort Worth and Cisco. It's one of several companies operating in McCulloch County, 140 miles northwest of San Antonio, that are seeing increasing demand for sand by companies for use in hydraulic fracturing.

In fracturing, a mixture of fluids and "proppants" are pumped at high pressure into a perforated well pipe to create small fractures in tight shale rock. The fractures let oil and natural gas to escape and flow out of the well.

Center of activity

Proppants literally prop open the fissures in the rock. They may be sand, sand coated with resin or ceramic pellets. Today Proppant Specialists' mine, operating since fall 2008, is at the center of activity near Brady in southeastern McCulloch County.

The demand for sand has brought hundreds of jobs to the area, McCulloch County Judge Danny Neal said, adding: "We've welcomed two new mining operations to our county in the last two or three years."

As new companies move in, "the pay scale is moving up because they're in competition for the workforce. These are quality jobs. However, they're for the physically capable."

Neal said the industry may employ as many as 1,000 in the county, not including truckers.

"All of these plants will have between 50 and 100 trucks load up every day," he said.

Other sand miners in the area include Houston-based Cadre Material Products; Carmeuse Industrial Sands, whose parent is Global Carmeuse Group of France; and Connecticut-based Unimin Corp.

"We produce frack sand almost exclusively at the Voca location," said Drew Bradley, senior vice president of operations for Unimin, which has had a mine in Voca since the mid-1990s. "Demand for sand has grown significantly" as companies ramp up in the Eagle Ford shale, he said.

At the Proppant Specialists open-air mine, visitors are surrounded on three sides by red 80-foot sandstone cliffs. On one end, an explosive charge created a crumple of sandstone. The rock is hauled to processing units. As part of a two-day process, the clumps go into hoppers to be broken up. The sand is washed - cleansed of red clay - sorted by grain size with sieves, then dried.

Uniform, round, strong

Fracturing operators are willing to pay for the right kind of sand for their operations. They need sand that's uniform, round and strong - that is, resistant to being crushed thousands of feet down in dense shale rock, said Texas geologist Jerry McCalip, an officer in the Texas chapter of the Association of Environmental & Engineering Geologists.Users also want sand that won't dissolve in acids.

"It needs to be predominantly quartz or silica," he said.

The sand in McCulloch County is silica and is prized for its purity and strength. Nicely rounded sand grains of the same size help with a well's production. Uniformity allows even spacing between the grains, allowing more oil and gas to flow to the top of the well.

Production companies choose different sizes and strengths of sand based on what will work best in a particular formation, said Jordan, vice president at Proppant Specialists.

The surge in drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Eagle Ford is pushing up the price of processed sand. Fracturing sand costs an average $110 per ton and has risen by about 10 percent since January 2010, said David Vaucher, senior researcher at the consulting firm IHS/CERA, who has examined activity in the Eagle Ford.